Shadow and color.

That's all there was... darkness and light... all around him.

The first thing he missed after he died was his sense of detail. He never knew how essential it was until it was gone. The sky... a familiar road... a passage from a favorite book. All gone. The sky was an insane tapestry of color, lorded over by a painfully brilliant white orb. The landscape before him was a strip of deep darkness, biscecting a glowing plane of color. It was a road. He knew that... but anything further was far beyond him. He saw what must have been a sign... a black pole jutting up from the ground. He couldn't read it from this distance.. . he knew that before he even tried.

He moved toward the sign with a peculiar floating sensation. It wasn't walking... for he had no legs. At least none that he could see or feel. Arms and head, too, were nonexistent. No skin to feel. No nose... no mouth. Nothing. He was just a pair of eyes and ears... an unfeeling camera that floated about by his every command.

Frank paused before the sign. He looked at it. He tried to focus... but no matter how much he strained, the sign's surface remained a uniform black. It was like trying to read a lump of charcoal.

"Where am I?" he thought.

He turned around and saw the school behind him... a dark, imposing shadow on the landscape. People walked nearby... each one was a unique rainbow of bright yellows and rich blues. If he tried hard enough, he could make out the faces... like masks carved out of white light. That took too long, it was much easier to recognize them by their colors. The adults were easy to pick out even from a distance. Their colors were less bright, with deeper streaks of blue and orange. Children were all white and yellow... except when they were sad or sick. Then they looked more like adults.

Frank laughed at the observation. It was strictly an internal exercise, since he had neither lungs, vocal cords, tongue or mouth... but he laughed nonetheless.

"Adults are all sick children. And some are sicker than most."

Frank watched for a while, trying to pick out any familiar patterns. He found none, which meant that the men that had chased Lori were gone.

But Lori was gone as well.

Frank had gone solid to help her. Through sheer force of will he had pushed himself through the thick veil separating his current state from the living world. For the briefest instant, he had arms and legs... skin... fists. But a few seconds later he came snapping back like an over-stretched rubber band. The whole process hurt like hell, and it always knocked him out for a few seconds. When he could see again, Lori was gone. He didn't want to lose her, but he had no choice. Those people were after her. The people with the bad colors. Their auras were slick and oily. And dim. Like a disease. All except for one... the one named Jericho. He was different. His colors.... his colors were... a lot like Lori's.

A chill went down Frank's nonexistent back, and he focused on the matter at hand. Finding Lori.

If she were within seeing distance, her pattern would glow like a lighthouse, drowning out nearly everything else around her. Frank couldn't see anything like that near the school, or on the roads that ran past it. That meant she had been taken, or had escaped.

"She's in trouble... and I can't do anything to help her."

Frank moved back toward the school. From there, he could follow a more familiar path toward the apartment where Lori lived

"I'm coming, Lori.... I'm coming..."

---

Lori ventured out of her hiding place twice to call home, but the phone remained busy.

"Dammit, mom," she said after the second try. "Now I'll have to walk."

No police or suspicious characters had been past the gas station, so Lori thought it was okay to risk the main roads. The going would easier and would shave a few minutes off of her trip home. As she walked, her mind turned to the man who was the cause of the situation... Frank Waid.

"He's a Sovereign, just like on TV. I'm not the monster... he is." She instantly felt a pang of guilt. Frank wasn't a monster and she knew it. He had saved her twice in the past two days... once from her ex-boyfriend Paul, and once from Father Jericho's zealots. He had gone out of his way to keep her out of danger, but then... hadn't one of those attacks been directly BECAUSE of Frank? The Congregation thought she was a monster because of him. And didn't Frank say that Lori was the only person he could communicate with? HE certainly thought so... and if that was true, then his help could have had nothing to do with his good nature... he could have acted out of purely selfish motives.

Maybe Frank WAS some kind of monster? How much did she really know about him?

With her thoughts occupied, Lori hardly noticed the trip back home. No one stopped or accosted her, and she could have sworn that a police car drove right past her just after she left the gas station.

The parking spaces in the apartment complex were mostly empty... except the ones outside here building. Her mom's car was there, as was a large brown van and a few other cars that she'd never seen before. Lori avoided them and took the long way around the lot. She crept along the side of the building. Her mind was already in the house, trying to explain to her mother what was going on. She cast occasional glances at the strange vehicles, but never even noticed the quick shuffle of footsteps until it was too late. Three men from the school stepped out of the stairwell just in front of her.

Lori froze. A hundred respones crowded into her brain... run... scream... cry for help... Lori's shocked mind accepted none of them. She stood and stared with her mouth hanging in an 'O' of surprise. Her eyes darted repeatedly from one stranger to the next.

"F-Frank? Frank HEL-"

"Do it."

Someone ran up behind her and stuffed a rag over Lori's mouth and nose. It had a sharp, chemical smell on it. She took a breath to scream... and then there was nothing...

[To Be Continued]